Dakota Dawn

My favorite people are (and will remain for my whole life) girls — my teachers, my mom’s friends, my classmates. I don’t like to play with boys. Boys are generally dumb and they have boogers in their noses. A somber ring finger performs a gender examination in my nostril. When I play computer games in private, I choose a female character. When it feels safe, I enter a female name. “Kimberly” is one I like, because Kimberly is the pink power ranger.

When I ask to sleep over at my friends’ houses, I am told I am not allowed. Boys are not allowed. My friend Caitie’s mother argues about this on the phone with my mother. I realize my mother is not on my side.

Later, my mother tells me Caitie’s mother is divorced, has a tattoo, and sleeps on a waterbed, the relevance of which doesn’t seem clear. I think Caitie’s mother is cool.

I am nine years old.

I love everything my sister loves, but I will not admit it. I know she and her friends will make fun of me. I know my parents will chastise me and correct me. I am learning the rules, and I am learning that boys liking girl things is a very high stakes issue. I am learning that adults react the same way to my interest in makeup as they do to my interest in matches and lighters.

As if maybe, by being what I am, I might burn down something very important to them. Something that makes their life more comfortable and easy.

So if a woman slaps her young son for wanting a pink toy, in order to teach him that pink is not a manly color, you think that the child is the one who is “at fault”, and not the abusive mother. You think that the abusive mother is the victim of misogynistic ideas like “pink is for girls”, and the child is her Oppressor. You think that the child, who is currently being slapped for wanting a pink toy, is benefiting from his mother’s belief that pink toys are only for girls. Correct?

dworkin

My favorite people are (and will remain for my whole life) girls — my teachers, my mom’s friends, my classmates. I don’t like to play with boys. Boys are generally dumb and they have boogers in their noses. A somber ring finger performs a gender examination in my nostril. When I play computer games in private, I choose a female character. When it feels safe, I enter a female name. “Kimberly” is one I like, because Kimberly is the pink power ranger.

When I ask to sleep over at my friends’ houses, I am told I am not allowed. Boys are not allowed. My friend Caitie’s mother argues about this on the phone with my mother. I realize my mother is not on my side.

Later, my mother tells me Caitie’s mother is divorced, has a tattoo, and sleeps on a waterbed, the relevance of which doesn’t seem clear. I think Caitie’s mother is cool.

I am nine years old.

I love everything my sister loves, but I will not admit it. I know she and her friends will make fun of me. I know my parents will chastise me and correct me. I am learning the rules, and I am learning that boys liking girl things is a very high stakes issue. I am learning that adults react the same way to my interest in makeup as they do to my interest in matches and lighters.

As if maybe, by being what I am, I might burn down something very important to them. Something that makes their life more comfortable and easy.

So if a woman slaps her young son for wanting a pink toy, in order to teach him that pink is not a manly color, you think that the child is the one who is “at fault”, and not the abusive mother. You think that the abusive mother is the victim of misogynistic ideas like “pink is for girls”, and the child is her Oppressor. You think that the child, who is currently being slapped for wanting a pink toy, is benefiting from his mother’s belief that pink toys are only for girls. Correct?

dworkin

My favorite people are (and will remain for my whole life) girls — my teachers, my mom’s friends, my classmates. I don’t like to play with boys. Boys are generally dumb and they have boogers in their noses. A somber ring finger performs a gender examination in my nostril. When I play computer games in private, I choose a female character. When it feels safe, I enter a female name. “Kimberly” is one I like, because Kimberly is the pink power ranger.

When I ask to sleep over at my friends’ houses, I am told I am not allowed. Boys are not allowed. My friend Caitie’s mother argues about this on the phone with my mother. I realize my mother is not on my side.

Later, my mother tells me Caitie’s mother is divorced, has a tattoo, and sleeps on a waterbed, the relevance of which doesn’t seem clear. I think Caitie’s mother is cool.

I am nine years old.

I love everything my sister loves, but I will not admit it. I know she and her friends will make fun of me. I know my parents will chastise me and correct me. I am learning the rules, and I am learning that boys liking girl things is a very high stakes issue. I am learning that adults react the same way to my interest in makeup as they do to my interest in matches and lighters.

As if maybe, by being what I am, I might burn down something very important to them. Something that makes their life more comfortable and easy.

The Washington Post found that nearly half of transgender women killed between 2015 and 2020 died at the hands of an intimate partner. Louisiana had the highest number of killings of transgender women per capita of any state.

She was jailed for 23 days for a female specific charge after being told she would be recognized as a man by her state.

Even as a post-op trans woman, I would think very long and hard about attending a women’s gym. I know that even though I’ve been out for half my life, been medicated since I was 15, and that I had surgery last year, I’m still going to make other women uncomfortable if I’m in that space. It’s just basic respect. 

If I, given all those specifics, can make the conscious choice not to use women’s spaces because of the impact I might have, why can’t this friend? And then it hit me: I’m not the same ‘trans generation’ as this person. 

A lot of the people I know who have come out in the last four years, specifically NB and trans women, have expected women to make enormous accommodations to their own safety and comfort, to make space for transfem people, because ‘women are happy to do it’. Or at least, that seems to be the attitude.

Trans women in the 1950s